


Voices from Nowhere

by Readertee



Category: Discworld
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-21
Updated: 2018-11-18
Packaged: 2019-06-14 14:38:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15390921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Readertee/pseuds/Readertee
Summary: What did happen to the Band with Rocks In without the Music influencing things, anyway?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Parts of the first chapter are from Soul Music itself. I put these parts in italics, and claim no ownership of them whatsoever.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _In a town without a name, in a heavy downpour, he thought he passed his own shadow by the backstage door! Like a trip to the past, to that day in the rain, when that one guitar made his whole life change…_ \- Juke Box Hero by Foreigner

_The single chord rang out across the gorge, and echoed back with strange harmonics._  
_THANK YOU, said Death. He stepped forward and took the guitar._  
_He moved suddenly, and smashed the thing against a rock. The strings parted, and something accelerated away, towards the snow and the stars._  
_Death looked at the wreckage with some satisfaction._  
_NOW_ THAT'S _MUSIC WITH ROCKS IN._  
_He snapped his fingers._

The world, to Imp, shimmered and twisted. There was an indescribable sensation which, had he tried to describe it anyway, he might have said felt like when your ears pop from a pressure change, except all over. The Music in his soul changed tone. There weren't words as such, but there was a sensation of _Perhaps you are owed something_ and then-

 _Imp was looking for somewhere to go._  
_The farm cart that had brought him the last stretch of the way was rumbling off across the fields._  
_He looked at the signpost. One arm pointed to Quirm, the other to Ankh-Morpork. He knew just enough to know that Ankh-Morpork was a big city, but built on loam and therefore of no interest to the druids in his family. He had three Ankh-Morpork dollars and some change. It probably wasn't very much in Ankh-Morpork._  
_He didn't know anything about Quirm, except that it was on the coast. The road to Quirm didn't look very worn, while the road to Ankh-Morpork was heavily rutted_ \--

\--Imp blinked. Wait, this felt familiar…

A while before the Eisteddfod, he'd stayed up all night trying to think of a good entry. When he'd slept, he composed a song in a dream and started crying when he woke up because he couldn't remember it all and it had been so beautiful. He'd worked and worked at what he could remember, and ended up with Sioni Bod Da, but he never quite felt it was as good as he'd dreamed it. He was feeling the same loss now, but he couldn't think why.

Imp's family occasionally had premonitions; it came with the Druidic territory [1]. He felt a strange dread now, when he looked toward Ankh-Morpork. There was - he wasn't sure. Fire, _blue_ flames… a sudden drop… Music ceasing and ominous Silence and then… nothing.

Perhaps it was best not to go to Ankh-Morpork.

Imp marched off firmly towards Quirm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] This was not what was happening, of course. But Imp assumed it was, because the truth was literally unimaginable to him. The mind protects itself.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Kick down the barricades, listen what the kids say: from time to time people change their minds, but the music is here to stay!_   
>  _I've seen it all from the bottom to the top, everywhere I go - the kids wanna rock!_   
>  _Around the world or around the block, everywhere I go - the kids wanna rock!_
> 
>  
> 
> Bryan Adams - Kids Wanna Rock

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God, this thing fought getting written. I must have done six versions of the chapter. Fortunately that's given me about half the next one, so it shouldn't take so long next time...probably...*knocks on wood*

Glod woke up and stared at the familiar rafters above him. The muted noise of Ankh-Morpork filtered in through an open window and through the heavy curtain separating his nook from the communal kitchen. He checked the space: same rickety wooden bed; same footlocker full of his clothes, pitiful small change and personal belongings; normal pig-iron hooks holding his chain mail, helmet and bronze horn; under his bed, his battered work boots sat as they always did. In the basement below him, the children of the Dwarf family he was lodging with were making noise as small children do when they want breakfast but emphatically don't want to get ready for school; through the curtain, one of their parents was stirring the pot of porridge that was the usual morning fare. It tasted like glue, but at least it wasn't Dwarf bread. Above, the human family who rented the top floor were going though a similar routine [1]. No falling, no void, no sack full of more gold than he'd ever seen in his life slipping through his hands. All perfectly normal.

It was probably just a dream brought up by nerves about his appointment at the Musician's Guild this morning.

The Musician's Guild. Probably his last chance. Glod swore extensively in Ankh-Morpork street-Dwarvish and scrambled to get ready and out the door, chuntering away as he made his way down cobbled streets covered in muck.

The thing Humans didn't understand about Dwarvish was, it wasn't just one single language. How could it be? There were too many Dwarves, and they were too spread out, and anyway different mines were too isolated from one another, to speak just one mutually comprehensible language. Nevertheless, along with the dialects threaded through the ore veins of Copperhead and shining along the fat and tallow deposits of Überwald, and the Creoles and pidgins of street-Dwarvish in various cities across the Sto Plains (most famous, of course, being Ankh-Morpork, the largest Dwarven city on the Disc, for all it was above ground), there were common-tongues and trade-tongues to let the scattered peoples understand each other. And then, of course, there was Deep Dwarvish, which you had to learn before you could properly become Endarkened enough to take part in the rituals that let you wander far from home and make your way in the world with no lodestone of family to keep you rooted in the mountains of your birth. Every Dwarf knew Deep Dwarvish, it was only spoken in the deep and the dark, and no one who was not a Dwarf could be taught it, and so if you knew Deep Dwarvish you knew you were a Dwarf, see?

A lot of songs were in Deep Dwarvish, particularly the ones that had Hole. And the ones about gold, the most precious and untarnishable metal. People joked about Dwarf songs just being "gold, gold, gold", but that was just - all right, mostly - because they were only sung in translation above ground where outsiders might hear. There were a lot of names and kennings for gold, and most of them were also metaphors which were commonly used in poetry, and so you could end up with a whole epic song about life, death and the sapient (not human, thanks) condition that translated out to Morporkian like it was one word. It was like that Agatean poem about the stone lion, in reverse [2].

Then, of course, there was the life-price that young Dwarfs had to pay to their parents to be recognised as a full adult able to marry, and which was at least nominally traditionally paid in gold. It was sometimes misunderstood by outsiders as buying yourself from your parents, like they owned you before then or something, but it was more a recognition of the effort and sacrifice involved in raising a young Dwarf to adulthood, and showing that you were your own person who could look after yourself now and owed nothing to anyone, even the people responsible for your existence. Family looked after each other through love, not obligation, after all. Besides, most parents turned right around and gave it back in the form of gifts, the sort of gifts useful to a young dwarf or couple just starting out in life.

The point was, gold was important, and the more you had of it the better, especially to a young Dwarf in an unfamiliar city who had never had enough in his life. Especially when that Dwarf had been unable to find proper work for two months after being laid off from his job as an apprentice painter at a painting and decorating business, which had barely earnt him enough to get by in the big city to start with. It might not be a very Dwarvish profession, but what did Glod care about Dwarvishness when he was making money at something he was good at? Except, of course, that now he wasn't any longer. He'd never been great at smithing and average enough at mining that he wouldn't stand out in the crowd of Dwarfs constantly hoping for work in the big city. The only thing he was good at, aside from an eye for interior design, was music, and OK so he had been sneaking gigs on the side for a few months now but to get enough money in to pay the bills he'd just have to suck it up and join the Guild, for all he'd heard their dues had skyrocketed the last few months. Always the way, you had to have money to make money to make any living at all out here in the Stink. He'd pay somehow.

Glod glared through the door of the Musician's Guild at the other person waiting for an appointment. Great, a troll. This was going to be _so_ much fun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] To Dwarves, the deeper into the ground a home is, the more prestige it has. You could have a really difficult time renting ground-floor lodgings to a respectable Dwarf, let alone the top floor. If he had any money or social standing, a Dwarf would live in a basement level at least.
> 
> [2] The Stone Lion that Eats Poets in its Den, an Agatean poem using only one syllable which is remarkably similar to a poem from Roundworld...  
> (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion-Eating_Poet_in_the_Stone_Den)


End file.
